


Home Is Wherever I'm With You

by EmiAliceinWonderland



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Boys In Love, Canon Compliant, College, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Established Relationship, Fluff and Angst, Friendship/Love, Hugs, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Nightmares, Post-Death in the Family, Post-Series
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-05
Updated: 2017-08-05
Packaged: 2018-12-11 16:04:55
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,320
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11717766
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EmiAliceinWonderland/pseuds/EmiAliceinWonderland
Summary: Is it possible to get homesick for a person?---"I'm so glad you're home," he starts to say, but before Adam can wrap his arms around him, he too dissipates into the air, leaving behind a cold, empty space, and an ache in Ronan's chest that turns to tears rising up through his chest and throat and then finally spilling hot and heavy and uncontrollable down his face.He has no one.---A.K.A. Sometimes Ronan needs a hug, and he cannot wait.





	Home Is Wherever I'm With You

**Author's Note:**

  * For [bblamentation](https://archiveofourown.org/users/bblamentation/gifts).



> Best friends to lovers gets me good and so do goodbyes and that feeling of missing people where your heart feels like its a hollow hole in your chest when you're hugging someone goodbye and you don't wanna be the first one to let go and neither do they so you both stand there for way too long not wanting to have to put distance between you. What i'm saying I've been listening to the same song on repeat and its 100% guareented to make me Emo Emi Because Reasons TM . Also I'm really emotional about these fictional characters <3 
> 
> Title is from one of my favourite, nostaligic songs of all time 'Home' by Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros :)
> 
> PSA: the last thing I wrote was a 10,000 word sociology dissertation that drained my brain of any and all writing power. I haven't written fanfic for months. My crops are wilted. My inspiration gone. My ability to type ruined forever from all nighters in the library, so forgive any mistakes or if this doesn't make sense lol

Ronan has been surprisingly happy lately. With the Glendower mystery solved, Blue, Henry, and Gansey happily away on their road trip, and Adam doing what he was born to do at college Ronan can contentedly tend to his dream animals and Opal whilst knowing his friends are finally safe and happy.

He misses Parrish of course, but it's not the constant, all-encompassing ache that he had feared it might be. Before Adam had left for his first week of college they had talked for hours, Adam's steady, warm palm in Ronan's somehow managing to coax out all his worries and fears into tangible thoughts that Parrish had patiently countered well into the night. 

\---

_"What if you don't want to come back?"_

_A squeeze to his long fingers._

_"I'll always want to come back to you."_

 

_"What if you find someone else?"_

_A small laugh at the absurdity of the thought._

_"There's no one else but you, Lynch."_

 

_"Will we still be able to talk?"_

_A peck to his cheek and a smile._

_"You know, there's this thing called a cellphone. You should try using it sometime."_

 

_\---_

The past few weeks of Adam's first semester away have been relatively smooth after the initial goodbye and the first nights apart after months of having slowly but surely slipped into a routine of falling asleep together in Ronan's childhood bed at the Barns. Adam isn't studying far away, it takes Ronan about forty minutes to drive to the campus, and Adam just over an hour to get home (because to Ronan's chagrin he refuses to disobey the speed limits the way the Lynches do). Adam comes back to the Barns every weekend, and sometimes Ronan drives up to see him during the week if neither are too busy.

It works; this thing they have going on, it really, really works. 

\---

Slowly, Ronan has come around to the idea of actually using his cellphone for it's intended purpose. 

(He still refuses to text back when Gansey sends stupid selfies from the roadtrip, and will still never pick up when Declan calls, but when he sees Adam's name pop up on the screen of his sleek black phone he can't help himself from pressing 'answer' almost immediately every time, and texting back paragraphs so long his thumbs hurt when it's late at night and Parrish can't talk on the phone for fear of waking his roommate.)

He doesn't know how one boy has managed to change him so completely in just a few short months, but he isn't complaining. The ebb and flow of support they have between each other now is more than anything Ronan could ever have wished for. His heart still flutters in surprise and overwhelming love sometimes, like a bird is trapped in between his rib cage, when he remembers that even if he's not in the bed next to him, his best friend is still, now, his _boyfriend_ too.

Missing Adam is different to missing his parents. He knows they can't come back, he knows he can't call them up to just to hear his Dad's voice voice, he knows he doesn't have the luxury of just having to wait a few more days until he can hug his Mum again. 

He can call Adam, he can hear his voice when he needs to, he can wait a few days until the weekend and get his fill of hugs from the other boy.

But somehow, for some reason, tonight just knowing that isn't enough. Tonight, missing Adam has become the all-encompassing feeling that he dreaded it might be when his boyfriend first left. Everything's been so good and so smooth for weeks now, he doesn't understand why his brain has to ruin it now. It is 11:06 PM and Ronan is in bed already. He's turned off all the lights in the house and is listening to music, trying his best to just close his eyes and let sleep wash over him so he's one day closer to Adam coming home. 

He lies in bed in the darkness, his eyes staring at the ceiling of his childhood bedroom. He closes them and imagines stargazing with Adam, pointing out constellations and thinking about other planets. He drifts off into a light sleep, and suddenly he's walking around the Barns outside of his physical body. Aurora Lynch is sitting in the living room, full of live and light. She looks up when Ronan's disembodied dream form comes into the room and smiles, but when Ronan tries to reach out to her she disappears. Niall Lynch hums a song under his breath from the kitchen and Ronan looks away from the empty space that his mother had occupied to find his father. Niall, too, looks up and smiles at his middle son when he sees him walk into the kitchen. Ronan moves towards him and Niall's form darts away into nothing. 

Ronan feels like a child. A hole in his heart, and a heavy, hurting disappointment seeping over him. He wants his mum and dad. 

He turns around in the kitchen and Adam is standing there, his arms open and inviting. "I know it's hard. I know you miss them," he says, and unlike Aurora and Niall, Adam seems so real that Ronan isn't sure he's dreaming anymore. He moves gratefully into Adam's embrace, needing the feeling of being held after days on end alone at Barns, more than he can put into words. 

With a start, he realises that tommorow is the anniversairy of his father's death.

"I'm so glad you're home," he starts to say to the boy in front of him, about to tell him the reason he's upset and out of sorts, about to explain that his dad died two years ago today and he needs his boyfriend at home with him for that, but before Adam can wrap his arms around him, he too dissipates into the air, leaving behind a cold, empty space, and an ache in Ronan's chest that turns to tears rising up through his chest and throat and then finally spilling hot and heavy and uncontrollable down his face. 

He has no one. 

 

\---

Adam wakes with a start, his phone vibrating stubbornly alongside the mahogany side table in his dormitory bedroom. He blinks in the darkness, struggling to see anything as he sits up and squints at the blinding brightness of the artificial light of his phone, the name "Ronan" flashing at him until his hands catch up to his brain and he's able to press 'answer'. 

"Hey, wait one second, I just need to go to the bathroom so I don't wake --" Adam starts, his voice sleepy and movements sluggish as he drags himself out of bed. It's not unusual for Ronan to text or call at night, they both know he's a perpetual insomniac, but the heavy breathing of the boy on the other end of the phone strikes Adam as out of the ordinary and cuts him of in his tracks. 

"Ronan, you okay?" he asks quickly and quietly as he shuffles in his pajamas into the bathroom, flicking the light switch on and gnawing on a hangnail on his left thumb as he waits for a response. 

He gets a grunt in response and a long drawn out breath coming down the phone that sounds like Ronan is trying to force himself to relax. Adam's eyebrows furrow, knowing only too well what this could be. "Nightmare?" he questions, though he's sure he already knows the answer. "Did you bring anything back?"

In his mind's eye, Adam can almost see the way that Ronan is shaking his head as he stumbles out a quick "no" to reassure Adam that there isn't a night terror flying around the Barns at this very moment. 

"Okay, good," Adam says. Ronan's night terrors have got substantially less frequent over the past few months, but there's always a risk of creatures and prey and strange orphan girls being bought back. "Do you wanna talk about it?" he carries on, realising that he hasn't even confirmed with Ronan that he even had a nightmare yet. He's just assuming from the sound of his breathing and the unprompted nature of the late night call - sometimes it feels like they know each other so well that they don't even have to explain a lot of the things they're feeling or doing to each other. Adam doesn't know if that's a good thing or a bad thing for two boys who still sometimes suffer with communication issues. 

"Adam," Ronan eventually chokes out from the other end of the line, a pause and the sound of his name being said in such a desperate way making up Adam's mind in an instant of what he's going to do. 

"Hey, yeah, I'm here, I'm here," he says quickly but softly, already thinking about where he left his car keys. 

"Adam, I -- it's stupid, but I...I just. I miss...I miss you. Please come home, I miss you."

Adam's heart clenches. Ronan had called the Barns home. His home, _their_ home. He never begged, never said please, never asked Adam to go out of his way to do something, never admitted he missed people, not even his parents. He wonders what dream he had, what prompted this. He thinks of the Barns, so big and empty with no one in them. He thinks of Ronan alone in his bedroom and wants to cry with the physical ache he feels rising in his chest at the thought of his boyfriend crying alone, waking up from a bad dream, too small and young in that big farm estate meant for a whole family and not just one boy. He thinks of how sadness and love and lonliness are not predicatble things that come scheduled in waves of feelings that you can anticipate, but chaotic emotions that creep up on you and suffocate you whenever they please. 

He thinks about how he doesn't want Ronan to ever have to deal with those suffocating feelings alone again. 

"I'm coming," he says down the phone, wishing he could seal his promise with a kiss, his lips pursing as if he can will Ronan to be here and not an hour away. "I'll be home soon," he says, his voice catching on the word 'home' as he doesn't wait for a reply, putting his phone down and moving to grab his essentials in the dark of his dorm room as quickly as possible. 

 

\---

Ronan waits, clutching his phone to his chest in the darkness of his bedroom, in case Adam calls back to say he's changed his mind and doesn't want to make the drive down back to Henrietta on a weekday. Logically, Ronan knows that Adam would do anything for him, the way he would in return, they're long past the boundaries of crying in front of each other, they've been through hell and back at each other's sides and they'd made an agreement before Adam went away that anytime they needed to be with each other they would make it happen no matter the circumstances. Ronan just doesn't understand the overwhelming sense of _missing_ Adam that he had woken up with after his short sleep. It felt almost like a homesick longing, but for not a place, but a person. A deep, embedded feeling of being totally and utterly alone that he knew he wouldn't be able to handle on his own without doing something stupid if he didn't call Adam. 

A small part of Ronan Lynch is proud of how far he's come in being able to ask for help. (A larger part is embarrassed that he needs 'help', that he so desperately needs to physically see and feels his boyfriend to be okay right now, but a small, small part is proud, and that is something.)

After what seems to be a little less than an hour, Ronan hears the crunch of tires outside the Barns and the shadowy flash of car headlights through his window. He chokes down a sob that rises to his throat with the sheer _relief_ that Adam is here, is home, is going to be able to hold him without disappearing in some nightmarish manner.

Ronan quickly makes his way down the stairs in bare feet, and gets to the hallway at the same time that Adam is opening the front door with his own spare key. "Thank you," Ronan squeaks out, embarrassed at the way his voice breaks and the tears from the strange feeling of complete and utter alone-ness his nightmare had left him with rushes over him again. He bolts forward into Adam's arms, and the other boy carefully closes the front door before wrapping his arms tight, tight, tight, and warm, and safe, and comforting, and perfect around Ronan. 

"I'm here, I'm home, it's okay," Adam whispers, understanding everything completely without even having to make Ronan explain - something that Ronan will forever be thankful for. Adam drops his head to the crook of Ronan's neck and lets his lips linger there, brushing against the skin in an almost kiss that leaves Ronan's skin warm and his heart full. Ronan tucks his head onto Adam's shoulders and squeezes his arms around the other boy tightly, making sure he's awake and this is a tangible, real, solid Adam Parrish. 

"I love you," Ronan whispers after a minute of standing and holding Adam without letting go. Adam's arms squeeze around him even tighter, his hold protective and firm and real and _here._

Ronan's heart finally lets itself relax as he closes his eyes and turns his nose into Adam's neck, his lips twitching in a smile when he burrows his nose at Adam's neck and realises he's still wearing his pajama shirt. Adam had driven home in his pajamas for him.

"I love you, too," Adam says.

 

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you to my very own bestie Maikay for prompting this with number 39 from this list "please come home, I miss you", please never make me say goodbye to you <3 : https://ships4you.tumblr.com/post/155331948325/prompt-list  
> If anyone reading this would like me to write something for any more of those prompts feel free to write so in the comments!


End file.
